Mallet or Setting Maul

from the book Encylcopedia of Freemasonry & its Kindred Sciences
by Albert C. Mackey M. D.

Mallet or Setting Maul - One of the Working-Tools of a Mark Master, having the same emblematic meaning as the Common Gavel in the Entered Apprentice's Degree.

It teaches us to correct the irregularities of temper, and, like enlightened reason, to curb the aspirations of unbridled ambition, to depress the malignity of envy, and to moderate the ebullition of anger. It removes from the mind all the excrescences of vice, and fits it, as a well-wrought stone, for that exalted station in the great temple of nature to which, as an emanation of the Deity, it is entitled.

The Mallet or Setting Maul is also an emblem of the Third Degree, and is said to have been the implement by which the stones were set up at the Temple. It is often improperly confounded with the Common Gavel.

The French Freemasons, to whom the word Gavel is unknown, uniformly use maillet, or mallet, in its stead, and confound its symbolic use, as the implement of the presiding officer, with the mallet of the English and American Mark Master.